You’ll be swept along

Fear­less op­ti­mist Anna sets off on an epic jour­ney – team­ing up with rugged moun­tain man Kristoff and his loyal rein­deer Sven – to find her sis­ter, Elsa, whose icy pow­ers have trapped the king­dom of Aren­delle in eter­nal win­ter. En­coun­ter­ing Ever­est-like con­di­tions, mys­ti­cal trolls and a hi­lar­i­ous snow­man, named Olaf, Anna and Kristoff bat­tle the el­e­ments in a race to save the king­dom.

“Our film is in­spired by An­der­sen’s clas­sic tale, The Snow Queen,” says di­rec­tor Chris Buck, “and yet Frozen is a story dis­tinctly our own – won­der­fully emo­tional, with plenty of ac­tion, ad­ven­ture, magic and un­for­get­table char­ac­ters.”

Di­rec­tor Jen­nifer Lee, who wrote the screen­play, says: “Our story started as a sim­ple idea about the power of fam­ily and has grown into some­thing more grand than we could have ever en­vi­sioned. It’s about fear ver­sus love, told through a fam­ily’s epic jour­ney – their strug­gle to over­come fear and find the true mean­ing of love.”

Buck and Lee (the first fe­male di­rec­tor in Dis­ney An­i­ma­tion fea­ture his­tory) teamed up to di­rect the film. “When Jen­nifer first joined the team as writer, it be­came clear that the in­di­vid­ual sen­si­bil­i­ties Chris and Jen­nifer brought to the ta­ble were al­most mag­i­cal,” says Del Ve­cho. “They were so in sync with the needs of the story that they made a dy­namic di­rect­ing team.”

Kris­ten Bell, who pro­vides the voice of Anna, says: “Jen­nifer Lee and Chris Buck have this per­fect bal­ance. Chris has such a his­tory with Dis­ney – he’s cap­tained so many ships and he brings all of that ex­pe­ri­ence. Jen­nifer brings won­der­fully weird new ideas and cham­pi­ons the film’s core themes, and I love how the two of them dance to­gether, bounc­ing ideas off each other that re­sult in th­ese won­der­ful scenes. It’s easy as an ac­tor to work along­side that.”

The voice cast also in­cludes Santino Fon­tana as Hans, a hand­some royal who catches Anna’s eye, Alan Tudyk as the Duke of We­sel­ton, Chris Wil­liams as Oaken, and Ciarán Hinds as Pab­bie.

Set in the fic­tional king­dom of Aren­delle, Frozen fea­tures a stun­ning back­drop that was in­spired by Nor­way’s spec­tac­u­lar land­scapes – from its snow-capped moun­tains to its tran­quil fjords. “The en­vi­ron­ment plays an in­te­gral role in our story,” says Lee. “Elsa has this mag­i­cal power to cre­ate snow and ice, but she can’t con­trol it and ac­ci­den­tally trig­gers a mas­sive win­ter storm that threat­ens her home­land.”

With a breath­tak­ing pal­ette, Frozen takes cues from Nor­way’s unique ar­chi­tec­ture, cul­ture and tra­di­tions, im­mers­ing au­di­ences in its en­vi­ron­ment. “This story has an epic scope with the rare abil­ity to sweep you in – you be­lieve this place ex­ists – and feel its magic. You for­get you’re watch­ing a movie,” says Del Ve­cho.

● Frozen hits the­atres across South Africa in 3D on De­cem­ber 20.

Frozen

AN­I­MATED EX­CITE­MENT:

fea­tures the voices of Id­ina Men­zel as Elsa, Jonathan Groff as Kristoff and Josh Gad as the snow­man Olaf.